Until the early 60’s, U.S. cigar manufacturers depended on Cuban tobacco. Because of the imminent U.S. embargo on Cuba, A substitute source was needed quickly, so the search began! Tino Argudin, who discovered the Jamastran Valley said: “We will never find neither soil nor region as similar to Vuelta Abajo (Cuba) as the Jamastran Valley in Honduras”. Accompanying Tino Argudin was Julio Eiroa. Julio Eiroa, native of Cuba and son of Generoso Eiroa (tobacco grower from the early 1900’s), remained in Jamastran ever since.

It was only a matter of time before the Jamastran Valley and Danli would become the leaf tobacco and cigar capital of Honduras and Central America. Almost 40 years later, Julio Eiroa’s operation grew to 1,500 acres of cropland and 20 million cigars a year, employing a total of 3,300 workers. ” Making cigars is not a business, it’s an art form and the only way to make good art is to make it all yourself,” says Julio Eiroa.

Julio and Christian Eiroa aren’t the first father-son team to disagree over how to run the family business. But the main players in <b>Camacho Cigars Inc.</b> and Tabacos Ranchos Jamastran are likely the only cigarmakers in the world rooting against their own products.

“We have a bet,” says Christian, over the performance of two selections in the Camacho line. Julio likes the Camacho Select, a cigar made with a Cameroon wrapper that debuted in early May. His son’s favorite is the more high-powered <i>Camacho Corojo</i>.

The two won’t disclose the terms of the bet, but each is serious about the outcome. Pride is at stake. The elder Eiroa, who lives in Honduras and runs Camacho’s tobacco growing and cigar-making operation, known as Tabacos Ranchos Jamastran, made the Camacho Select blend his way, kept the packaging Spartan and closed his ears to input from his son.

“When the old man first made a sample, I said, ‘Dad’”—Christian makes a motion in the air, showing how his father cut him off. “He said, ‘No. This is my baby.’”

The good-natured ribbing got a bit heated last Christmas. Julio left Miami angry and early, flying back to Honduras.

Julio is not apologetic about being at odds with his son on occasion. “I don’t like full-bodied cigars,” he says. “They’re too strong for me. I always go for the cigar that you can smoke five or 10 cigars a day.”

Julio is Camacho’s patriarch, a 67-year-old with a stubborn personality honed by decades of doing things his own way. He used to own, a small plane, which he would fly around Honduras, but a crash in 1977 nearly ended his life. It robbed him of some of his freedom, leaving him partially paralyzed.

“When I got in the accident, I was by myself, and then everything went down. There was nobody to follow me,” he says. Christian was only five years old. “I got out of tobacco for a few years. When I got back, I started hiring Cubans from Cuba. It was a disaster.”

Upset with how others were running his operations, Julio eventually reduced the amount of tobacco he planted and took a greater role in the growing. He now says he is getting nearly the same yield from far fewer plants. And he continues to be a perfectionist when it comes to the quality of the leaf. “Two years ago, I burned $2 million worth of tobacco, bale by bale,” says the elder Eiroa. He didn’t like it, and wanted to rid himself of the temptation to turn it into cigars. Christian, 34, is stubborn in his own right. When he joined the family business in 1995, his father didn’t want him buying tobacco from overseas, but he began buying it anyway, realizing it was the only way the company could grow. “I got lines of credit from the bank, and I just started buying tobacco. He didn’t know what was going on,” says Christian. “So there was always a difference in perception…there has always been a certain conflict.”

Christian didn’t want to work with his father. “Family businesses are always hard. It’s never easy,” he says. The situation proved too difficult for his older brother, Justo, who left the family business to work in the bottled-water industry. “They couldn’t get along,” says Christian. “Too many arguments.”

Christian, a big, outspoken man with a sharp sense of humor, has the personality to match his father’s confidence. “There are a lot of silent treatments before the launch of each brand,” says Christian. Julio has been known to yank a product or change speed at the 11th hour, often spoiling Christian’s distribution plans. He sometimes hides tobacco in Honduras, to throw Christian off when he visits.

“As competitive as our industry has become,” says Christian, “speed to market is a big issue, and I think that causes a lot of our problems. He’ll say it’ll be ready in June, then I have to pull back the reins; everything has to come to a stop again. It drives me crazy.”

Each Eiroa is confident he will win the bet. “My cigar is going to be selling 90 percent, and you’re going to be 10 percent,” says Julio.

Despite the good-natured ribbing, each sees the value of the other in the business. “He’s a hell of a salesman,” says Julio of his son. “We love the business, we work hard. But I tell him, he sells the first cigar, but then the cigar has to sell itself.”

Christian tries to return the favor by describing his father’s dedication to the craft of farming tobacco, sharing the story of how Julio was able to grow fine leaves on a patch of rocky, desolate soil that others had abandoned.

“There’s this field, this patch of land we have on the farm that basically everybody had given up on. It’s a…”

Winston Churchill, perhaps the most famous cigar smoker of all time, was well known as a devotee of Havana cigars and especially of the Romeo y Julieta brand. But he was also a fan of Camachos, almost from the moment that Simon Camacho set up shop in Miami in 1961.

The connection between the two was a man named Antonio Giraudier, the owner of one of the most popular beer brands in Cuba - Polar Beer - in the 1940s. When Churchill visited Cuba in 1946, he made sure he met the man he considered the greatest of the 20th Century.

Not only did he meet Churchill, but offered him the use of his private beach house outside of Havana (which Churchill gratefully accepted), and then began sending a lifelong supply of cigars to the then-former British Prime Minister. According to Stephen McGinty's entertaining work, Churchill's Cigar, Giraudier sent cases of 500 Por Larranaga cigars to Churchill - at his own expense - every three months beginning in late 1946 and continued the practice until his brewery was nationalized and Giraudier had to flee with his family in 1961, first to Miami, then to the Bahamas and later to Florida for good.

But even in his reduced circumstances, Giraudier was not going to let his friend go without cigars from him, and he found a new source, according to McGinty: "Camacho Cigars Inc., who had obtained a stock of Cuban tobacco and had put their best men on the task of making 50 cigars for Churchill at a cost of just $62, the equivalent of £20."

The cigars arrived on July 4, 1962, as Churchill was recovering from hip surgery at The Middlesex Hospital and his personal secretary, Anthony Montague Browne, wrote to Giraudier that "I find that Sir Winston has tried both the green and mature cigars, and is enjoying them both very much. If anything, he has a slight preference for the green leaf." Imagine . . . Churchill a candela smoker!

Churchill left the hospital with an adoring throng on hand to witness the scene, smoking what might well be a Camacho, although he was known to also have a supply of both Ramon Allones and Romeo y Julieta cigars with him in his hospital suite! Upon hearing of Churchill's satisfaction, Giraudier immediately ordered 100 more cigars from Camacho: 75 of the candela and 25 in colorado claro shade. They were shipped by sea to lengthen the aging time and Churchill was quite pleased.

He wrote to Giraudier on December 12 that "I am most grateful to you for sending me more of those excellent cigars." Churchill continued to enjoy Camachos, and he gave a Camacho Lonsdale - unsmoked - as a souvenir to a friend at a 1963 luncheon at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo that was later acquired by Forbes publisher Steve Forbes. It was sold at auction on June 2 of this year at Christie's of London for $3,069.

Churchill died in January 1965 at age 90, smoking his final cigar on January 9 before suffering a massive stroke that evening and finally passing on January 24. No one knows if it was a Camacho. - From Perelman's Heard in The Humidor